I'm an author and advisor who focuses on helping those doing good in the world. I call myself a "champion of social good." As a Forbes Contributor I cover social entrepreneurship and impact investing. My books on personal finance and crowdfunding draw on his entrepreneurial finance experience as an investment banker, CFO, treasurer, and mortgage broker in order to help people use financial resources to do good. Previously I worked on the U.S. Senate Banking committee staff and earned an MBA at Cornell.

Crowdfunding Lesson From Habitat: Empower Your Volunteers

CHARLOTTE, NC - MAY 20, 2013: NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and his pit crew help frame a Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte home, as part of M&M'S effort to 'M'Prove America.' The program, which which will be featured on Busch's No. 18 M&M'S Toyota this weekend, is designed to fund the construction of Habitat for Humanity homes across the country. (Image credit: Getty Images for M&M'S via @daylife)

Dave McMurtry is a player in Silicon Valley. I mean that in the very best sense. He is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and has spent much of his career in the tech community, including more than half a decade at tech giant IntuitIntuit. He more recently served as the CEO of Loomia, a social media company.

In 2005, Dave wanted to take a break from his career to give back. As a pilot, his first choice was to volunteer some flight time to Doctors without Borders, but when he found out there weren’t any of those volunteer opportunities available at that time he decided his help was needed more elsewhere.

He called several prominent nonprofits to volunteer his time in experimenting—and in 2005 that’s what crowdfunding was—with the idea of using social media to raise money for nonprofits. He says, “No one knew what to do with me.”

In July 2004, Dave had served as a volunteer supporting official U.N. observers for the first elections in Afghanistan. While there, he and some of his colleagues helped build a home for a local who was working with them. Dave saw firsthand the impact that having a home had on this man and his family.

Drawing on this experience, and as a longtime volunteer at Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley, he tried Habitat for Humanity InternationalHabitat for Humanity International, offering to create a crowdfunding initiative for a specific project without any resources from the organization. Jonathan Reckford, the CEO, quickly accepted Dave’s offer to volunteer his time and fully fund the experiment. They agreed to run the project in Colombia, which Dave describes as one of his “favorites,” so Dave flew there to launch the experiment.

The project was to build and fund five homes at a total cost of $25,000. Dave quickly raised $200,000 so the project was dramatically expanded, ultimately putting 250 homeless people, displaced by the terrible violence in the region, back into housing.

The success of the program helped to change the relationship between Habitat for Humanity in Colombia and the government of Colombia, which has since become a major funding mechanism.

After this successful experiment in 2005, Dave went back to the corporate world as the CEO of Loomia.

Upon leaving Loomia, he volunteered for several months with Kiva, working in Liberia in support of their microfinance programs. Making the world a better place is what drives Dave.

In 2009, Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford called Dave to ask him to come to join the cause full time to lead the effort to create an aspirational five-year strategic plan and also to “run with this crowdfunding idea.”

Over the past year, Habitat has raised more than $1 million on the Share.Habitat platform, powered by Fundly, proving the vitality of crowdfunding. Dave believes Habitat will raise a multiple of that number in 2013.

Over the last year that I have been writing for Forbes, I have also been researching my book, Crowdfunding for Social Good, Financing Your Mark on the World. I have been inspired by Habitat’s crowdfunding success.

English: President George W. Bush (R-TX) working on a Habitat for Humanity build site. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Given Habitat’s success, I asked Dave to share some of his ideas for best practices.

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